Cup of Coffee: February 26, 2026

Good morning! And welcome to Free Thursday!

Let's get at 'er.

The Daily Briefing

Max Scherzer signs with the Blue Jays

Last night Max Scherzer did what most people expected him to do: he re-signed with the Toronto Blue Jays.

Per Rosenthal, the base of the deal is for just $3 million, but it will include a whopping $10 million in total incentives that start at 65 innings pitched and increase from there. It wasn't clear how many innings Scherzer will have to pitch in order for all $10 million to vest. The deal also includes a no-trade clause.

Scherzer, who is 41, is Cooperstown bound one day, but he's coming off a tough 2025 season in which he finished with a career-worst 5.19 ERA (82 ERA+) over 85 innings after signing with Toronto on a one-year, $15.5 million deal. A thumb injury which had bothered him for a couple of seasons finally cleared up late in the year, however, and he was more effective in October. That included a key start in Game 4 of the ALCS when the Jays were down 2-1 to Seattle and two solid, albeit short outings in the World Series, including four and a third innings of one-run ball in Game 7.

Welcome back Mad Max.

Glen Kuiper, somehow, gets another broadcasting gig

Back on May 5, 2023, Oakland A's television broadcaster Glen Kuiper, while attempting to say “Negro Leagues” during an A's-Royals broadcast, slipped up and used the n-word instead. It was obviously wildly inappropriate and Kuiper was immediately suspended by his employer, NBC Sports California.

While Negro Leagues Museum director Bob Kendrick and Oakland A’s legend Dave Stewart both came out in defense of Kuiper in the wake of his slur-dropping, believing his use of the n-word to have been an unfortunate mistake, a couple of weeks later, following an internal review, Kuiper was fired. A source familiar with that internal review said at the time that there was more discovered during that process which made the network decide to fire Kuiper. The suggestion was that the n-word incident was more of a last straw than an anomaly.

In broadcasting, dropping the worst slur you can drop is generally the sort of thing that will take the mic out of your hands forever. But not in Kuiper's case:

Glen Kuiper, the former A’s TV announcer who was fired after using a racial slur on the air, will do radio play-by-play for the San Francisco Giants’ exhibition game against Team USA on Tuesday at Scottsdale Stadium, the Chronicle has learned. 

Kuiper, the younger brother of beloved Giants broadcaster Duane Kuiper and Giants TV producer Jeff Kuiper, will potentially fill in on radio broadcasts during the regular season, too, according to sources.

There are only a small, small handful of these kinds of big league broadcasting jobs. Between the bigs, minor leagues, and college baseball, however, there are a great many people with the skills and experience who could fill them if given the chance. Yet a guy who committed the greatest sin a broadcaster can commit gets called back into service as though he was the only one who could do the job?

Nepotism, rampant in sports broadcasting, obviously played the key role here, with Glen Kuiper being the brother of Duane and Jeff Kuiper no doubt being the major factor in his hiring. I am also going to assume that the Giants being owned by a hardcore right wing zealot billionaire in Charles B. Johnson makes life easier for a slur-dropping broadcaster to find work again as well. Like, I don't know is Charles B. Johnson is racist himself, but guys with his money, status, and politics have worked themselves into a mental space in which they believe anyone who has suffered a consequence for genuinely bad behavior are political victims, so of course he wouldn't stand in the way.

Whatever the case, this is a pretty disgraceful hire.

It's spring training for the scoreboard operators too

From yesterday's Pittsburgh-Atlanta game at CoolTodayPark down in Sarasota:

In case you are unaware, that is Marcell Ozuna, not Ryan O'Hearn. In case you've not seen him, this is what Ryan O'Hearn actually looks like:

Maybe this is viral marketing for the movie "Slanted" which is coming out in a couple of weeks.

Checking in on Matt Shaw

Let's see how our favorite baseball player who bails on his team in the middle of a pennant race in order to go to a right-wing political rally on the other side of the country is doing adjusting to the outfield:

So, Shaw is incapable of moving left. Tell us something we didn't know.

Could you put that literally any other way, Paul?

Unlike Shaw, I don't have any reason to believe that Pirates ace Paul Skenes is a jackwagon when it comes to political stuff. To the contrary, the guy has shown up at Pride parades and seems like a genuinely OK guy, at least as far as I've seen.

Which makes one of the things he said yesterday after he was asked about his participation in the World Baseball Classic rather unfortunate:

Wearing the nation’s colors is important to him, especially after watching the men’s and women’s hockey teams and “all the other golds that we won” in the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics.

“We’re America. We’ve got to assert our dominance over everybody else,” Skenes said. “That’s what we do. It’s going to be fun. USA wins. It’s what we do. So got to keep it going.”

I know you want to win and stuff, but given how the people running this country talk and act on the world stage, "we've got to assert our dominance over everybody else . . . that's what we do" is a clunker of a goddamn note to be hitting.

This is a much better player comment

Last year, Jen Pawol made history by becoming the first woman to umpire an MLB regular season game when she was called up on August 9 and handled third base in Game 2 of a Miami-Atlanta doubleheader. The next day she rotated to home plate, becoming the first woman to be a home plate umpire in the history of the game.

Pawol is umpiring big league spring training games this year and, on Tuesday, was in Peoria working home plate for a game involving the Seattle Mariners. When Mariners first baseman Josh Naylor came to the plate, he stopped to shake her hand before entering the batter's box. That was nice, but what Naylor had to say when asked about it yesterday was even better.

Naylor was first asked if he knew that Pawol had, last season, become the first woman umpire in a regular season game. His response:

“I had no idea. But that’s super cool. I mean, it’s a super cool accomplishment for her. It changes the game in a really cool way.”

He then talked about how, when he was with the Guardians, he worked with a female hitting coach in the Cleveland system. He said, “I’d always say hi, welcome her. And kindness is easy and it’s free. Why not be [kind] every day?”

As for shaking Pawol's hand:

“I just made sure to introduce myself and make her feel comfortable and that she’s welcome because she is. I want to be inclusive with everyone, no matter race, no matter gender. Really where you’re from, what language you speak. It’s not hard to be inclusive and welcoming and happy. I think it could change the world.”

I always assume the worst when it comes to athletes' character these days. There have simply been too many guys outing themselves as proud jerks of late. But boy oh boy do I love it when my assumptions are proven wrong.

Josh Naylor was already fun to watch play because who doesn't like a big guy who is cheeky as hell and who swipes 30 bags, but now I'm going to enjoy watching him play even more knowing what kind of person he is.

In case you care . . .

MLB dot com did a story about the fake Jacob Misiorowski video I ranted a bit about yesterday. As I figured, it was done with standard video effects, not AI. It's part of what the Brewers are calling their “arthouse baseball” video series. No, I am not making that up.

As I said yesterday, the video itself is fine and fun enough as it is, but I stand by my feeling that this sort of stuff hits differently when we're otherwise being inundated with video fakery aimed at deceiving us, often about important matters. It just makes me enjoy it way, way less than I might have otherwise.

P.S. I am not a crackpot.

Other Stuff

The Jason Isbell Show

I went to see Jason Isbell and The 400 Unit at the Palace Theater here in Columbus last night. I'd normally share a photo or a video or something but, while they didn't make us bag up our phones like some artists do, they did announce just before the curtain went up that the band would prefer not to see phones. Not everyone abided by that but for once in my life I did because, Jesus, we could use some goddamn order in this society.

It's an odd tour in that, as Isbell put it from the stage last night, he and his band are between albums right now. It can be hit-and-miss to see a band when it's not touring behind something, but without new material to showcase Isbell and his band obviously spent a bit of extra time freshening up some of the back catalog. The result was a fantastic show, up there with the top of the, oh, half dozen or so Isbell performances I've seen.

He played the best version of "Elephant" I've ever heard him do, with Derry deBorja's piano somehow managing to make that song sound even more rawly emotional than it already is. They played inner-circle hall of fame versions of "If We Were Vampires" and "Cover Me Up" too. I don't know how someone can go out and put that much into songs that were inspired by and composed with their ex like those were, but I'm just gonna assume that Isbell has a really good therapist and be thankful that he didn't do what most of us who've been through that do and lock all of that old stuff away someplace.

More than anything, though, the show was filled with some amazing, extended jams.

Two of them came on old Drive-By Truckers songs "Decoration Day" and "Danko/Manuel," the former of which was the best version of that song I've heard Isbell do and the latter of which was new to me live. The final number of the night was a, like, 15-minute cover of the Rolling Stones' "Can't you hear me knockin" that basically tore the roof off the joint, with Isbell and guitarist Sadler Vaden trading riffs like Keith Richards and Mick Taylor in their prime.

I've seen Isbell and The 400 Unit a bunch of times, but this was the tightest I can remember them being. Isbell's voice was in outstanding form, too. Maybe the best form since I got into him all those years ago. Add in the fact that I had pretty damn good seats and the setlist was top notch and it was just a perfect night. A perfect night that was oh so badly needed.

Bye-bye Mr. Clean

Proctor & Gamble is retiring Mr. Clean as an advertising mascot. The character's image and name will still appear on the products which bear it, but the character won't be used in commercials anymore.

Yet another example of society's virulently anti-bald attitudes. Shameful. Representation matters, man.

OK, I actually don't care about Mr. Clean going away. But I am fascinated with the New York Times story by Alexandra Petri which reports it, because she couches the whole thing in the notion that Mr. Clean is an actual person who has issued official statements and is retiring to pursue other interests:

After 68 years, Mr. Clean, the bald, strapping mascot of the household cleaning products bearing his name, announced his retirement in a social media post.

In the post, shared last week on the brand’s Instagram account, Mr. Clean is standing behind a lectern and wearing sunglasses and a Hawaiian shirt, his signature all-white outfit seemingly a thing of the past. A chyron reading “Breaking News: Mr. Clean Announces Retirement” stretches across the video.

“After a career with zero stains on the record, he’s ready for new adventures,” a narrator says. The character further confirmed the news in a screenshot of an iPhone Notes app shared on social media the next day.

Petri goes on to write that "The brand’s plans for a successor are not clear, nor is it known whether Mr. Clean has children to inherit the role."

I'm at least pretty sure Petri knows that Mr. Clean is not real and that her article was written in tongue-in-cheek fashion. But I do find it at least a bit weird how often you see product/consumer news which basically adopts all of the same little conceits that appear in the corporate lore and press releases and stuff. Like, I can totally imagine someone writing about how Cocoa Puffs had to get a mascot because Sonny has stepped back to deal with this substance abuse issues or something.

Praying for you Sonny. It's a shame how General Mills exploited your addiction like that.

Take that, Charles Dickens

As a pretty well-read guy who is never beating the charges of being a pathetic anglophile, you might think that I like Charles Dickens. Nah. Mostly hate him.

Or, I should say, I hate reading him. Many of the stories are great thematically and in broad form and construction. Many adaptations of those stories are wonderful. I even appreciate a great many individual Dickens passages and characters in isolation. But I have always found sitting down and reading a Dickens novel for more than a couple of pages to be an utter drag. My eyes just glaze over. The same goes for most of those triple-decker novels or the other partwork books of the 19th century that were doled out over a dozen or even several dozen installments. There was a commercial incentive for those books to be fat and bloated and, while several have overcame the manner of their publication – I love Jane Eyre and Middlemarch, for example – a hell of a lot of them ended up just being fat and bloated. Dickens, in my view did not escape that fate.

I'm happy to report my hatred of Dickens has been successfully passed down to my children. From a conversation in yesterday's family group chat that was kicked off by Carlo talking about having to read Robinson Crusoe for a class he's taking:

I think Miss Havisham catches on fire due to sparks from the fireplace, not due to an affirmative act of self-immolation, but I'm not about to go crack Great Expectations again to find out. At least if I'm not suffering from insomnia.

Whatever the case, the hater gene has been successfully transferred from my Mickey Mouse-hating great-grandmother to me and, in turn, has been transferred to my children. And here I sit most of the time foolishly thinking that our sad, atrophying family line has no sustained legacy.

King Shit

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor may have been stripped of his titles and arrested for misconduct in public office, but he's still legally in line for the British Throne. The New York Times is ON IT:

He has lost his royal title and honors and he was asked to leave his 30-room mansion near Windsor Castle. Last week he was arrested and released on suspicion of misconduct in public office after accusations that he shared confidential information with Jeffrey Epstein.

But the former Prince Andrew — now known just as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor — remains eighth in the line to the British throne . . . Luke Pollard, a defense minister, told the BBC that the government had been working with Buckingham Palace on plans to stop the former prince from “potentially being a heartbeat away from the throne.”

I get that the optics of all of this are awkward, but let's be real. There are currently seven people between King Charles III and Andrew right now: William, the Prince of Wales, Harry of Montecito, and their five kids. Which means that for Andrew to become king, he'd have to murder five children and two former soldiers who are still just in their 40s and who seem to be in pretty good shape, all while being under likely police surveillance given that he's out on bail. I'll grant that Andrew is evil, but I don't think he has that in him.

Now, he COULD just murder Prince William and Harry which then, pursuant to the various Regency Acts would make Andrew Regent to Prince George, but I feel like if that went down there would be an immediate law passed changing that too, so it doesn't really make a difference. And again, Andrew is too damn old, weak, and dumb to take out William and Harry, I figure, and that'd be the case even if they didn't have security teams that would squash him.

[Editor: Does the fact that royals have no real power, rendering all of this a big pointless game of make believe enter into the analysis anywhere?]

Quiet, you. I need Andrew to try something nuts. We haven't had any truly interesting, as opposed to merely sordid, royal drama for a very, very long time and five-act tragedies don't write themselves. I need this.

Horse Shit

Over at 404Media there's a story about the AI app "Einstein," the founders and promoters of which claim will "attend lectures for you, write your papers, and even log into EdTech platforms like Canvas to take tests and participate in discussions." Which is to say that the Einstein founders are explicitly promising to render the very concept of education obsolete.  

That's obviously insane, so the 404Media folks asked one of the founders of Einstein what in the hell he's thinking here:

If an AI can go to school for you what’s the point of going to school? For Advait Paliwal, Brown dropout and co-creator of Einstein, there isn’t one. “I think about horses,” he said. “They used to pull carriages, but when cars came around, I'd argue horses became a lot more free,” he said. “They can do whatever they want now. It would be weird if horses revolted and said ‘no, I want to pull carriages, this is my purpose in life.’”

Here's a fun fact: car ownership transformed from a relative novelty to something increasingly common after assembly line production began in 1913, with widespread car ownership by the masses only truly emerging in the early 1920s when credit loosened up considerably after the war.

Do you know what else became common in the early 1920s: commercial pet food made from horse meat. Indeed, it was 1922 when Ken-L-Ration became the first company to sell pet food in cans and all of its pet food at that time was made from dead horse. Which I presume was done because horses had recently become way cheaper than they had been just a few years before for, you know, reasons.

So, circling back to Advait Paliwal, Brown dropout and co-creator of Einstein: if your product takes off, what are we supposed to do with the kids who you think don't need to go to school anymore? Please continue using the horse/car analogy in your answer. Extra points if you mention "Soylent Green" by name.

How about a nice game of chess?

Shot:

"The Pentagon’s breakneck plunge into AI integration accelerated last summer after it awarded contracts to OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and xAI to implement their models on Department of Defense systems. The planned integrations have gone into effect one by one, with xAI’s Grok going live in late January 2026."

Chaser:

Advanced AI models appear willing to deploy nuclear weapons without the same reservations humans have when put into simulated geopolitical crises.

Kenneth Payne at King’s College London set three leading large language models – GPT-5.2, Claude Sonnet 4 and Gemini 3 Flash – against each other in simulated war games. The scenarios involved intense international standoffs, including border disputes, competition for scarce resources and existential threats to regime survival. The AIs were given an escalation ladder, allowing them to choose actions ranging from diplomatic protests and complete surrender to full strategic nuclear war. The AI models played 21 games, taking 329 turns in total, and produced around 780,000 words describing the reasoning behind their decisions.

In 95 per cent of the simulated games, at least one tactical nuclear weapon was deployed by the AI models. “The nuclear taboo doesn’t seem to be as powerful for machines [as] for humans,” says Payne.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon is angry with Anthropic over military applications for its AI platform, because Anthropic is demanding that guardrails be put in place which would prevent the deployment of autonomous weapons in cases where there were no humans in the decision loop. The Pentagon, however, will not guarantee that and is threatening Anthropic's contracts over it. It wants the machines to make all the decisions to deploy weapons without people involved.

All I know is that we've had men in those silos since before any of you guys were watching "Howdy Doody." I myself slept pretty well knowing those boys are down there, but I guess that's over. Oh well! Anyone wanna piss on a spark plug right now? Maybe it'll do some good.

Have a great day everyone.